What is Ultimate Suite?

Why purchase PureComponents Ultimate Suite?

• For the price of $118 you get complete set of 80 software controls to develop and deploy all kinds of applications.
• You receive free access to latest updates for the period of 12 months.
• You get access to full documented C# source code which can be used in your projects for no additional costs or license fees.

You sure have heard about iPad, magic device that some love and some think it is not so great. It is not a laptop not even a netbook nor is it a tablet. It does not have full-scale operating system. So is it worth anything? It is being sold millions per month, so there must be something to it.

I have bought the iPad, my very own. I liked the idea to read the web when sitting on a bench in the park or use it while on a sofa at home. Having large collection of books in such slim and light package also sounded good.

So could it be useful to .NET developer?

For me it is books in the first place. I can have lots of books in my iPad, and you know how big and heavy those .NET books are. I can read them anywhere. I like the fulltext search, notes and highlights. Sure I can have it in a laptop, but having it in iPad is much more comfortable and feels just right.

Another great stuff is reading blogs, twitter and using InstaPaper for stuff to read later. Channel9 videos can be played on iPad as well, how cool is that? And iPad is not all work either, have you heard about Angry Birds? I mean pretty addictive stuff, can tell you that!

So how you would use your iPad?

Let us know your ideas below this article. Let your imagination go wild and tell us.

Pavel Mikunda
co-founder, product management & marketing

VisualExtender is a special component, which can extend the functionality of other components about new visual functions. How does it work? You insert VisualExtender into Form and all components, which occur in Form, are extended about new properties, including Form. VisualExtender uses for this function Extender Provider from .NET Framework.

Visual Abilities

VisualExtender distinguishes between two types of components - Containers and Controls. Each type has different visual possibilities.

Containers

Container type components include e.g. Form and Panel. In these components you can insert other components. VisualExtender extendeds Containers with these visual functions.

Background
This function can color the background of component in several different ways. It can also draw a watermark on the component's background, which is created by the mark of graphic font Windings or another font.

Background consists of three parts: Background Fill, Watermark and Image

Title
This function can display the title and subtitle of the component's background. This can be used e.g. to display the form's name and other supplementary information.

Controls

Other visual components e.g. TextBox, Label and Checkbox. By means of VisualExtender can be Controls extended about these visual functions:

Caption
For description of each component are classically used labels. This function draws next to component Caption without necessity using Label control. Caption can be displayed in several different ways.

Caption essentially consists of two parts - Caption and Shape. Caption is text portion and Shape is background filled rectangle portion. Following image shows several examples of Caption and Shape in use:

Hyperlink
This function displays Caption in style of hyperlink. It means that it is possible to click on hyperlink and cause specific operation.

Required Sign
This function displays Required Sign at data entry component. It means that user has to enter data in this section.

Flag
This function can display so-called Flag next to the component. It is a simple picture (e.g. flag, point, arrow, diamond), which can represent specific condition or information. You can click on the Flag and cause some operation.

Shadow
This function has very simple task - to display a shadow under the component. It can cause an impression of three-dimensional space and reach that way more attractive user interface.

Design-time

VisualExtender was designed to be very easy to work with in design-time. VisualExtender changes appearance of your application and that is why it is important to have possibility seeing all changes immediately. The appearance of application in design-time must be the same as in run-time not to be necessary to compile and initialize the project after each change.

Work with VisualExtender is similar to work in graphic program. For adjusting of the particular visual functions can be used so-called Visual Editors, which look similar as

Tool Box in graphic programs. From the context menu of component you choose e.g. command Captions and Visual Editor for Caption presetting displays.

The properties of visual functions can be also set in classical way with Property Window. Object model of VisualExtender is designed carefully. Properties have logical hierarchical structure, which can be easily understood.

The Visual Extender is part of .NET WinForms Suite.
Download trial version here or purchase full version here.

With the PureComponents LightGrid (DataGridView) control, you can display and edit tabular data from many different kinds of data sources. It supports styles for all the parts including columns, rows and individual cells. LightGrid (DataGridView) cells can contain images, flags, markers and progress bar. Cells support formatting and can be edited as different data types including date picker for dates and check boxes for boolean values. The component supports sorting and filtering as well.

LightGrid Anatomy

Grid Header, Column Header, Fixed Columns, Filters and Sorting
Row Header, Cell, FxRow

Fixed Columns

When there is a higher number of columns it may be very helpful to fix some identifying data to be displayed all the time as you scroll across the columns. LightGrid supports this through the FixedColumns property where the number of still columns can be set. 

Filters and Sorting

LightGrid supports data filtering and sorting. This you can achieve by clicking the dropdown inside the Column Header. If not necessery, sorting can be disabled with AllowSorting property and the arrow hidden with ShowFilterUpDown property. After clicking the dropdown the following popup menu is displayed:

Mark

Marks are graphical marks, which can be displayed at the right side inside the cell. Mark may have the appearance of upper corner, lower corner or strip. You may choose its color. It can be used to mark the particular entry fields. If you want you can add a note to the mark, which would appear as a tooltip when the user points the mouse on a mark.

Cell Highlight

Cell Highlight is a feature allowing to effectively emphasize the cell. It is turned on with the Cell.Highlight.Visible property. You can define the Color, Shape and Transparency of highlighting. Each cell can have its own Highlighting style independent on other cells.

Cell Flag

Each LightGrid (DataGridView) cell can be marked with a simple graphic sign - the Flag. Each flag can have its Color and Shape defined. The options for the shape are Flag, Exclamation, Point, Diamond, Arrow, ArrowUp, ArrowDown and Custom. The flag can be aligned to both left and right side of cell.

Progress Bar

The cell can contain the Progress Bar. It can have the value range set through ProgressBarMin and ProgressBarMax properties. The Progress Bar appearance can be defined either on the column or on the individual cell. 

The LightGrid is part of .NET WinForms Suite.
Download trial version here or purchase full version here.

BackColor

Background color of the component. If you set the color on Transparent, the background will be transparent. Also edit box and combo box support the transparency!

FadeColor a FillStyle

How to achieve the blending effect of two colors? BackColor represents the first color and the second color is set in FadeColor. Set the style of filling (blending) using FillStyle property.

BorderColor and BorderStyle

If the component supports the frame imaging (e.g. EditBox, ComboBox, ContainerPanel), you can set its color in BorderColor and the type of the line in BorderStyle. If BordeStyle=None, the line will not display.

Shape

This property determines the shape of the component. E.g. in EditBox you can set if the shape will be angular or if the corners will be rounded. At Label component the shape shows if you set the BackColor or turn on the label imaging.

Theme

This property determines how some components will be displayed, e.g. Button. That way you can set whether the Button will have common look or unusual look such as Vista.

UnderlineColor and UnderlineStyle

If the component supports the underline, the color is set in UnderlineColor property and the look is set in UnderlineStyle. It is not ordinary underline, which is in Font property but it is special underline, which allows you to underline the text e.g. by red tilde as you can se in Microsoft Word.

Download trial version here or purchase full version here.

GridCalendar provides rich style hierarchy for setting the desired appearance. It allows to define style for each individual part, including Header, Footer, Row and Column Headers. Days have one common style and multiple style options for defining special appearance, such as selected days, holidays, days of week, days with special events etc.

Several predefined styles are available in designer with possibility to be easily turned to different color scheme with the ThemeStyle setting. The Theme Style allows you to update the color scheme of all the styles by simply dragging a slider in a designer.

Months styled

GridCalendar allows you to display individual months in different styles, using the MonthRanges and MonthRangeStyle definitions. Every MonthRange consists of StartYear/StartMonth and EndYear/EndMonth definition. When the Year definition is left blank, the range is applied for all years. MonthRangeStyle definition allows to set month background, Row Header style and a day shape.

Individual dates styled

It is possible to set even the apperance of individual days using the DateItems and DateItemStyle definitions. Each day can contain multiple events defined as DateItem structure. DateItem definition consists mainly of date and text displayed in a tooltip. DateItem can have its style - either it can use one of styles defined in DateItemStyles collection or it can have its own style defined. With Calendar.ShowDateItem property set to true the image or text abbreviation can be displayed directly in the day cell.

The date can contain multiple DateItems. When the items are of different appearance, styles are combined when possible, so for example a red border and a blue background can be displayed at a time.

Data binding

DateItems collection can be filled using data binding. After specifying necessary DisplayMemberDate and DisplayMemberText members any DataTable or object collection can be bound to calendar. Dates are then populated with events from the data source. Data binding would not be complete without having the possibility to style the items - this can be done with setting the DisplayMemberImageIndex and the DisplayMemberStyle properties.

Date range

The range of displayable dates can be set through MinDate and MaxDate properties. The information about currently displayed range is always accessible in FirstVisibleDate and LastVisibleDate properties.
The initial setting of first displayed date can be done with ShowMode property. ShowMode.MinDate option shows the beginning of the date range, while ShowMode.MaxDate shows its end. ShowMode.Today sets actual month as a start month. Last option is ShowMode.DefaultDate which shows the month stored in DefaultDate property as a first visible month.

Navigation

Multiple navigation concepts are available. For vertical scrolling the ScrollBar or NavigationBar can be displayed on the right side of calendar. For navigation between months there can be dropdown button displayed that opens a new component called MonthSelector. You achieve this through the NavigationMode and ShowMonthSelector properties. The MonthSelector has its own branch in calendar style definition.

Selection

Multiple day selection modes are available through the SelectionMode property. SingleDay mode makes the last clicked date selected. Continuous mode enables to select the date range. Random mode allows user to select multiple dates and ranges using Ctrl and Shift keys, same as during standard Windows selection. The maximum selected day count can be defined with a MaxSelectionCount property. Selection can also be disabled at all.

Events

GridCalendar contains rich event model which enables you to handle a number of user actions. All calendar parts, including individual days, provide information about user mouse actions and clicks. You can also get information about selection changes, calendar navigation and resizing. The appearance of any day can be updated during data binding using the ItemBinding event.

The GridCalendar is part of .NET WinForms Suite.
Download trial version here or purchase full version here.

The ColorList is .NET WinForms control, which extends the ListBox control. It does almost everything that a ListBox does and also can display a colored box next to items in the list.

The following picture shows the individual parts of the ColorList control.

Color Box Item Text Item Description Selected Item Item Gap ColorList Background

(1) Color Box

What makes the ColorList different from the other list components is a Color Box - a colored rectangle for each item. Different colors and styles can be set, as well as the ColorBoxSize.

The following image shows the Color Box FillStyle options, the values are: Flat, VerticalFading, HorizontalFading, DiagonalBackward, DiagonalForward, VistaFading, VerticalFading2, VerticalFading3

The Color Box can be of transparent color. In this case just the dotted frame is displayed.

(2) Item text,  (3) Item Description

Every item has its Text and optional Description which is displayed below the text. The text and the description have their individual style so their apearance can be set separately. The left picture shows items with the description, the right picture items without it.  

Each ColorList item can have its own style. To reach this the LocalStyle property must be set to true. This property is a member of the ColorListItem class. All the items in the following picture have their own style defined.

Each ColorList item has the divider. This is a horizontal line separating items from each other. The divider can use the different kinds of outline and its color can be changed.

(4) Selected Item

The SelectedItem has its own style defined in ColorList. It is possible to choose the color, background fill style and the border. The mouse hover effect can be set by TrackingBackColor and TrackingTransparency properties.

Selecting the item and tracking is shown in the following figure.

(5) Item Gap

The space between the items can be adjusted by the ItemGap property.

(6) ColorList Background

It is possible to set the BackColor and FillStyle of the ColorList. The picture shows the FillStyle options, the values are: Flat, VerticalFading, HorizontalFading, DiagonalBackward, DiagonalForward, VistaFading, VerticalFading2, VerticalFading3.

The drawing the odd and even items with the different style is also supported. It is done by setting the ColorList ShowAlternateItems property to true.

Databinding

The ColorList can be connected to different kinds of data sources. This is done the same way it is usual in .NET framework - through the DataSource and DataMember properties. Each ColorList item can have its text, description and color filled from the data source by setting the DisplayMemberColor, DisplayMemberDescription and DisplayMemberText properties. Formatting the text and description is supported as well using the .NET framework string formatting engine with the FormatText and FormatDescription properties. For example, the date in the data source can be formatted to "2007-05-01" by setting the FormatText property to "yyyy-MM-dd" or the numeric data can be formatted with the "Item number {0}" string.

The ColorList is part of .NET WinForms Suite.
Download trial version here or purchase full version here.

PureComponents TreeView is powerful component for .NET WinForms. Adds a rich treeview experience to your applications, with an in place designer, which is fully integrated into Microsoft Visual Studio.NET and has a rich set of design functions simplifying development. Its object and event model gives you complete control over your code and application.

Main Feature List

• WYSIWYG designer with full support of drag&drop, clipboard and undo&redo.
• Each node, checkbox and expand box can have its own color style.
• Four different checkbox styles and three expand box styles to choose from.
• It is possible to set style inheritance in the TreeView's hierarchical structure.
• Text underlining uses several styles - dash, dot, solid or tilde.
• Multi-line word wrapping.
• Highlighting the selected node or flashing some important node and its whole path.
• Easier tree navigation can be achieved with nodes auto numbering.
• Save a content of TreeView to XML file and load XML file to the TreeView.

TreeView Introduction Video

Action Menu

Designer actions are accessible from special state of the art menu - the Action Menu. With expandable and collapsible sections you can always have only the important actions available, always customizable to your needs.

Easy Building

Nodes are individual entities within TreeView, you can set their properties directly in the Properties Window.

Drag and Drop

Drag and drop is strong feature of the TreeView designer and with the help of several visual effects and intuitive functionality it helps to use the TreeView designer and speed-up the design process.

Color Schemes

Color Scheme Picker is a tool used to set TreeView color scheme from predefined color schemes.

Styles

Using colors it is possible to modify TreeView to your needs, use styles to alter the TreeView's look&feel in an easy and effective way.

Expand and Check Boxes

Each node, checkbox and expand box can have its own color style giving you endless possibilities to customize look&feel of the component to you needs and always highlight important information to application users.

Flash

Using the Flash method you can highlight the desired path, in this case the path to the programming node.

Highlight Selected Path

Inactive TreeView can have its active selected node path highlighted, use HighlightSelectedPath to switch that behavior on or off.

Flags

Using Flags visual entity you can highlight specific information, you can choose from several types of flags and assign any color
you wish to.

Built-in ContextMenu functions

Runtime editing and arranging is available in the built-in TreeView context menu without coding. You can activate a special editing and arranging functions in TreeView's context menu by ContextMenuEditing, ContextMenuArranging and ContextMenuXmlOperations properties. Context menu strings can be localized.

XML functions

Save a content of TreeView to XML file and load XML file to the TreeView. With integration of in place editing functions, XML serialization gives you the ability to build tree editing forms in minutes without the need to code all necessary functions manually.

Move functions

Integrated editing functions like Move functions, in place title editor and keyboard hotkey functions are advanced functions helping you to implement richer TreeView user experience in shorter time.

The TreeView is part of .NET WinForms Suite.
Download trial version here or purchase full version here.

From version 2010.1 we offer new way of subscription purchase. Previously only year subscriptions were available. Now you can purchase for shorter periods as well for lower prices. You can choose between 90 days, 180 days or 365 days. Should the subscription end, you still will be able to use the product without any limitations, but you will not have access to actual versions and source code. More information can be found here.